Creme Soda Special
by Sulcal
Summary: [Post DoC, no spoilers] Understanding love has never really been so complicated. Yuffie just has to learn the hard way. [Implied Yuffentine drabble]


Disclaimer: Pfft. Ownership? Me? Yeah. As if.

Creme Soda Special

_For all the Yuffentine lovers out there. :D Prepare to eat your hearts out._

She's always had a crush on him. That much has been blatantly obvious for some of the longest time. It's the teenage romantic in her that has yet to die out completely, even at nineteen. Even as Lady of the Pagoda. BecauseYuffie believes that the brightest lights are never the first one sees at brith. No one ever remembers those. No, the brightest are the people she knows, the greatest friends, ones she'll never let die-- _him_ most of all. Like the fires of the Dao-Cho mountain caves, they even glow brightest in the dark.

At least, that's what she saw at first.

Vincent, although he's begun to smile more, to change... Yuffie knows, no matter what she feels for him, he'll never look at her the way she looks at him. Neither Shelke, nor that dead woman Shelke reminds him of has anything to do with it. Yuffie knows that now.

And it started out so simple, her plan to win that man over. So simple, and she ended up understanding more than feeling bad about it...

"Do you like creme soda?" Yuffie ended up asking Vincent. He looked different in a suit. Reeve seemed to be doing good, coaxing the dead human being under Vincent back up from the depths.

They're sitting with the others. A get-together that they all have once a year-- a celebration to survival. Yuffie's been proud to say it was all her idea to start it.

"Hm?" Vincent mutters around the edge of his glace.

Yuffie points at the drink, smiling. "That. Creme soda. What 'cha think, Vince?"

He half shrugs. "It's different." he replies, almost as if he weren't expecting her to ask him anything. She surprised him. Good. And he's passing it to her with a faint frown. "Did you want it?"

"Why?"

"It was the last one."

He's certainly gotten more talkative.

Yuffie praises Lavaiathin.

"Nope. I'm good." She grins at him sweetly. "Hey, I know a drink Tifa taught me! Wanna try it? Called the Creme Soda Special!"

Vincent merely shakes his head. "No."

And that talkative door is slammed shut the moment Yuffie touches his hand to take the drink. He doesn't flinch even as she leans into his shoulder, her eyes slipping closed.

That's alright, she tells herself. She wasn't expecting too much. Right now, everone else was ignoring them, and that was all that mattered to her.

---

She doesn't know _how_ it ended up this way.

Her hands are snaked into his hair for a moment, while they're alone, and she's pulling his face to hers, and there's a look in his eyes-- _a look_. Yuffie knows there's a part of Vincent that's noticed her, noticed her feels, noticed something, _something_. And Yuffie can feel how course his hair is and how his lips are almost against hers, his breath, her own, the closeness... Yuffie's heart is in her chest, hammering at her ribs as if it wants to break out and run laps around the whole of the Wutaiian continent. Vincent's fingertips are brushing agsinst one of her shoulders.

No else is here.

They're all gone.

The world has melted into that one--

"No," he says simply.

Yuffie watches him pull back, eyes going slightly wide, and her fingers clench to bring him right back and he _winces_. "Hey! Gods dammit, kiss me!"

"No," Vincent repeates as his _strong_ fingers pull Yuffie's away. "No, Yuffie."

"Why not!"

"You're too young."

The way he looks at her, though, doesn't suggest that age really has anything to do with it. Everyone knows-- _knows_ that the guy is old. Older than what most people live to be these days thanks to all the stress the Planet goes through.

Yuffie looks at him.

Vincent shakes his head. "No."

She understands, then, surprisingly, what he's trying to say as he instead presses his thin, chapped lips to the right corner of her lips. Lingering. He's not telling her no. He's silently telling her yes. Yuffie can _hear it dammit!_

But Yuffie really is young. She knows. She knows she honestly hasn't found what she wants. She wants him more than anything, because she _loves_ all there is to Vincent Valentine. And the way his fingertips still linger before he pulls away and leaves tells Yuffie that he's sorry in more ways than her mind could comprehend right then. She just wish he would stop looking out for her best interest and agree with her. She wants him to stop knowing everything that's best, knowing that this was for the better, that she will eventually age and love and live with someone who will make her feel like she's not the only one moving through time.

Yuffie loves him. Because Vincent was thoughtful enough to break her heart then and not while it was too late.

She ends up drinking the Creme Soda Special by herself.

---

Notes: And that, people, is why Yuffentine's _SUCK_. I have nothing against them, really. This is just a matter of personal opinion.


End file.
